


Stable

by Shatterpath



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatterpath/pseuds/Shatterpath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina like water. A dramatic analogy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stable

**Author's Note:**

> Whoever put up the prompt of 'stable', I'm quite certain didn't have something like this in mind. But I do love Regina's complicated nature and it led me to take another look at that word. Stable. A place for livestock, the scrap of geography where her heart was broken and her path to evil set. It also indicates calmness and a tendency to not change. So I went with that. Going to dictionary.reference.com (thank you interwebs!) I read through the definitions and something caught my eye under 'science dictionary': _Relating to a chemical compound that does not easily decompose or change into other compounds. Water is an example of a stable compound._
> 
> And the rest, as they say, was history.
> 
> PS: This was punched out in around a half hour on 9-17-2012. How I love inspiration!

Water is a stable compound and I take my cue from that, secure in who and what I am. Calm and focused and unchanging. Like water, the unifying element of this dreary, boring place we have found ourselves in, I am what I am and all must get out of my path. Nothing stops water forever; molecule by molecule, drop by drop, it finds a way through any obstacle. That is me, persistent, until I get my way.

 

And, like water, I can be a force of destruction, smashing my will against my adversaries, scattering them and myself into droplets.

 

Not so stable then.

 

Ice surrounds my damaged heart, still and quiet, a suit of armor over my gaping wounds. From Mother I learned not to love, from pain I learned that ice can be a weapon.

 

Water is a stable platform. A position of power for me, of stability and comfort.

 

But I forgot one facet of water.

 

Water chilled is like stone, water liquid can find its way through any crack.

 

Water heated... becomes steam.

 

Explosive, expansive steam.

 

It boils to consume a space, fill it with humid, broiling intensity, ready to kill the unwary. The only stable thing about steam is its chemical makeup, not really on one's mind as the rage and helplessness fill me to overflow.

 

Twenty-eight years have been mine, lording over all that I created, over all that I imprisoned. Twenty-eight years, I have been the winner, not those simpering, weak fools. Twenty-eight years, the knowledge that the mewling brat of prophesy survived has weakened my armor of ice, simmered my water of calm.

 

When she walked into my town and disrupted my calm, my simmer exploded into steam.

 

Cracks appeared in the ice, the foundation of what I have been for so long growing shaky and humid in the melt. How could she be my boy's mother? How did this happen? My only weakness now is Henry, my love for him a calming center, my only non-destructive outlet. Those cracks, my love for him, pain me as he turns against me, driven by the force of truth that is that cursed book!

 

That first, ponderous movement of the clock echoes through my soul like a frozen river shattering in the spring thaw. I had come to truly believe that it was not even real, had no capacity of movement, like a movie facade. This is how it starts, this first act of devastation wrought on all that I have built.

 

Memories begin to return, things happen that I cannot control and no matter what I seem to do, it is wrested from my hands. Soon, I am a tiny island of ice, steam rising from the lake of water that traps me.

 

Water can kill in all of its forms. Ice crushes and grinds, freezes until there is only death. Water roils and floods and rushes, choking away breath and drowns. Steam chokes and burns and bursts confinement at the seams.

 

Water is a stable compound. Now, I am anything but.

 


End file.
